'small plates' on Serious Eats

Center Bar, a small plates cocktail lounge—complete with a piano player—on the fourth floor of the Time Warner Center screams, "Don't go there. It's meant for exhausted shoppers and tourists, not serious eaters."

But that assumption would be wrong. Way wrong. In fact, Center Bar turns out to serve a limited menu of some of the finest small plates I've had in a long time. They're certainly not cheap, the menu is certainly not consistent, and the overpriced cocktails don't help. But the kitchen, under the watchful eye of Porter House New York's Michael Lomonaco, is turning out food that at its best (about half the time) could easily be served at the front room at Gramercy Tavern. It's not Le Bernardin Lounge good, but it's also not Le Bernardin Lounge expensive. And if you skip the decent but mostly overpriced cocktails you can have three excellent courses (if you choose wisely) for about $40 before tax and tip.

Bar impresario Ravi DeRossi (Death and Company, Mayahuel) comes to Carroll Gardens with Bourgeois Pig Brooklyn, the second outpost of the East Village original. The bordello chic trappings—think gilded ceilings and velvet throne chairs—complement an Old World-style drink menu inspired by spirits from Western Europe. More

That more New Yorkers don't know the name Harrison Mosher, executive chef of Alta in the West Village, is a crying shame, though you wouldn't guess there was a dearth of press trying to push your way through the long, crowded bar and foyer on your way to the main dining area. More

The early coverage of Mulberry Project, a speakeasy-style bar in Little Italy that opened in frigid January by Matty Gee (formerly Milk & Honey and Boom Boom Room), revolved around the unique cocktails, mixed on the fly in a collaboration between imbiber and bartender. Now that the weather is warmer, Mulberry's cozy back patio has become one of the best places in the city for an early evening drink and bite, when the atmosphere is noticeably more relaxed and subdued. More

"Asian Fusion" and "small plates" were the "locally sourced" and "house-butchered" of a few years back—restaurant trends that turned into buzzwords that devolved into cliché. So it's hard not to feel a little doubt when we hear about a place like the new modern-Korean Danji, serving small plates of "Korean flavors prepared with classical French techniques." We'll spare you the skepticism: the food you'll find at Danji ranges from good to fantastic.More

Editor's note: In "Apps Only," Ben Fishner will be eating his way through New York's appetizer, bar, and lounge menus as your guide to fine dining on a budget. He blogs at Ben Cooks Everything. Polpette from 'inoteca. [Photos:... More

While meals were once neatly divided into appetizers, entrees, and desserts, an increasing number of restaurants (in New York and elsewhere) now structure their menus around small plates—little dishes, generally meant for sharing, that can be ordered free-form. Some diners love the experience of trying more dishes at a given meal, but others prefer the traditional format, seeing small plates menus as difficult to make sense of, and often more expensive. What do you think?More

Only in Japan have they taken the simple concept of bar snacks—small, often salty treats designed to get you to drink more—and transformed them into a culinary and social art form. Try one of these Japanese Izakaya dish recipes: Karaage, Agedashi Dofu, Tuna and Avocado Nuta, or Yaki Nasu. More

These crab and chickpea "sliders"* start with a slightly streamlined, miniaturized version of Mantuano's Falafel Crab Cakes (I use canned chickpeas, tweak the spice blend to make it more sandwich-friendly, and add a tiny bit of flour to help the patties hold together more easily during the frying stage), which he describes as from "southern Spain, which owes many culinary inspirations to the Moors of Northern Africa." More

Intended as a cheap way to draw customers into drinking establishments, the most traditional tapas are easy to make, inexpensive, and go perfectly with booze. Nobody wants throwing a party to be a chore, least of all the cook. In that spirit, here are 4 simple tapas that require only 4 ingredients (aside from salt, pepper, and olive oil). They're guaranteed to get the mixers mixing and the shakers shaking. More

Warning: This post is filled with food punditry. Everybody fancies himself a food pundit these days. And why not? We all like to eat, and we all like to think and talk about food. And there's plenty to talk about. Food is all over the news everywhere you look. The only thing we need is a cable network that would put us on the air to do all of the above. So until that day comes, you and I can do our food punditing and prognosticating right here, starting now. Trends I'm in Favor Of Small (Plates) Really Are Beautiful Small plates mean we get to more carefully calibrate how much and what we eat. This is most assuredly a... More

Kathryn Matthews in Portfolio discusses how small plates mean big business for restaurants: "At first glance, the concept seems customer-friendly: With these appetizer-esque portions, you can mix and match and taste and graze, and each serving costs less than a main course. But there’s a little secret: Serving less can mean selling more, thereby boosting a restaurant’s bottom line." I love small plates, but only when I'm eating in a group of four or more (three if everyone likes to eat as much as I do), otherwise as the piece points out, the tab can get surprisingly huge if you've ordered what I consider to be a reasonable variety of tasty things. [via The Food Section]... More